


Grieving

by m_findlow



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 14:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13719501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_findlow/pseuds/m_findlow
Summary: Even an immortal is not immune to the stages of grief.





	Grieving

Jack had suffered grief so many times in his long life, that it was impossible not to notice his own pain in the friends around him. Gwen and Rhys had each other to lean on, to help process all the feelings that kept bubbling to the surface, always when you least expected them, but Jack... Jack had no one. His someone was gone, taken away forever. 

He hadn't always believed that. 

Ianto was lying there, in his arms, telling him how much he loved Jack. He wouldn't dare say it back. This wasn't the end. They weren't exchanging goodbyes. They just had to fight harder for it. He wouldn't dare leave Jack here all alone. Ianto loved him too much for that. 

He wasn't dead. He was just.... what? Jack had been there, given him the gift of his own immortality. He pressed his lips to Ianto's, letting it flow out of him, as much as he needed, all of it if he had to. It had worked before, and it would work now. It was just taking a little longer, that was all. As the hours stretched on, cloistered up in that makeshift morgue, still the form under the blanket didn't move. 

He wanted to reach across that table and strangle the life out of Frobisher. This was his fault. If he'd just left them alone to do their job, they might not have been forced into a corner, made to confront the alien at a point when it was already prepared to sacrifice the few to gain the many. None of what had happened since that first morning had been in their control, forced to make do with what little they had. Their own people had tried to kill them, to take them off the board. The one team that might have stood a chance at solving the problem had been deemed a problem. He wanted vengeance for them trying to kill his two best friends. All of this could have been avoided. 

When he saw Gwen slumped in the floor, knees pulled tight to her chin, crying her heart out, that was when it finally hit him, fully and completely. Ianto was gone. He wasn't coming back. No amount of magical time vortex could undo what had happened now. Ianto's death was a fixed point in time, just as Jack's own existence was also fixed. They'd reached that inevitable fork in the road where their two paths would inexplicably and forever diverge, never to meet up again. He wasn't ready for it, for any of it. He'd always had so much time and now there was none left. 

When they finally came for him and clipped the cuffs around his hands, all the fight left him. He felt as if his very soul had been spilled across the floor, seeping away in every which direction, leaving him completely empty, like a shell. Let them take him. He'd tried and he'd failed. Everything that mattered to him was gone now. What was left to fight for? 

There was just that one brief moment of lucidity, as Gwen wrapped her arms around him, wake turbulence from the helicopter whipping her hair around them, concealing their parting words. This was probably the last time he'd ever seen her before the world ended. There was one more thing she could do for him. Ianto was gone but there was still someone she could save for him: Ianto's niece and nephew. He'd never met them, but he knew in his heart that some small part of Ianto's soul remained in them. If nothing else, please let that small fragment survive. Safe in the knowledge that task was done, he could finally let go. 

Prison was probably the right place for him, solitary confinement even better. It was just how things had always been, him all alone with nothing but his own memories to haunt him. All the pleas for help and the desperation in those voices floated over him like clouds overhead. He couldn't help them now. He had his own pain to deal with. Why couldn't they just leave him alone? Once more he was being dragged into the fray, unsure what they thought he could do. He wasn't the leader of Torchwood anymore, he wasn't a companion of The Doctor, he was just him, just a man who was powerless to save anyone. 

Perhaps though, just perhaps if he stopped them, everything would go back to how it had been. Maybe if he could defeat them, everything they'd done could be reversed. Even as he saw Steven standing there, Dekker telling him he needed a child to fix things, he knew. Maybe if he gave up something of himself, he could get something back. That was how it worked, wasn't it? A piece of Jack in order to have his Ianto back. There was no moral dilemma for him. One child. That was all it would take. Just one child to fix everything. 

Only he hadn't fixed everything. Steven was dead, and there was no bringing Ianto back to him. He might have saved the world, but he couldn't save himself. Instead he'd destroyed the one thing that made him human. 

He could forgive his daughter for hating him. She'd been the one person who'd believed in him -that he could fix things- and this was how he'd repaid her faith in him. He'd taken the one thing she loved most in the world, just as the 456 had taken from the world the one person he loved more than life itself. He could accept her hatred, but it didn't make it any easier for him to live with himself. 

He disappeared from Cardiff for a long time. The government never stopped looking for him in the aftermath, but nor did they put their best efforts into the task. He could have walked the streets of Cardiff, coat streaming behind him, and no one would have taken any notice. With the Torchwood hub destroyed, none of them had a reason to remain in the city, and whilst that was the case, Torchwood was disbanded and no longer a threat. 

He went so many places, drifting from one city to the next, and sometimes out into the middle of nowhere. Wherever he went, he became invisible. No longer did people remark on his appearance in the streets. Whatever magic had clung to him before, that bright smile and sparkling eyes had faded. He was just a ragged man in ragged clothes, searching for something that no longer existed. Only his coat remained impervious to the haggard man housed beneath it. He couldn't bear to part with it, one last gift from his lover who'd revered that coat even more than he had. 

And no matter where he went, how far he travelled, even to the remotest corners of the earth, still he couldn't escape the memories and the pain. How many times had he killed himself, just to be removed from it's agonising grasp for just a few moments? Drinking himself into a stupor, throwing himself off some balcony or cliff, or putting his gun to his head and ending it. None of it brought him any closer to an end. He was immortal, forced to live with the consequences of his actions for all of eternity. 

He made camp at the end of the valley, nothing more than a blanket, really. He hadn't intended returning to Wales, but if the memories would haunt him wherever he went, he might as well at least feel closer to the love he'd lost. It was so beautiful out here, it was almost as if Ianto's spirit was here with him. 

He had no idea how long he'd laid there, days, weeks, unmoving, letting the sun rise and set overhead, staring blankly at the cool green grass and the moody grey clouds that billowed above. He neither ate nor slept, letting his body wither and fade over and over. 

When the sun came up bright one morning, warming his face like a lover's touch, he knew he'd made up his mind. He couldn't go on any longer, and as if by serendipitous intervention, he was alerted to a problem in the village at the bottom of the valley. A seance being held at the most haunted pub in Wales. Only there was more to it than that. This was his opportunity. A way to seal the rift forever and to end his own pain as well. 

He'd hoped beyond hope that he might get one last chance to see his lover, and that a woman with no particular talent for seeking out the departed could bring him here just for tonight. He felt so real, standing there in his neatly pressed suit, talking to Jack as if everything were perfectly normal. He should have known that Syriath would try to pull him into her scheme, but he wanted so much to believe that there was truly a way to bring Ianto back. He'd been prepared to blow up the rift and seal himself inside the void, and then Ianto had to come along and try to convince him otherwise. He'd give anything to have Ianto back. Suddenly his life had meaning again, just one step outside that house and Ianto would be back with him again, in the land of the living. 

Standing on the hillside, watching all the lights of Cardiff twinkling below him, he knew now that it was never meant to be. There'd been a lot of ghosts in that house that night, but they'd all been manipulations of Syriath. All except one. One ghost that had sealed the rift, saved the world, and stopped Jack from doing the unthinkable, destroying himself for all of time. It was just like Ianto to make his final sacrifice for Jack. Now Jack knew there was no way he could stay here. There was nothing left here on Earth for him. He'd make his goodbyes to Gwen and Rhys and never come back. For him, any hope of salvation lay somewhere else.


End file.
